Lab Innovations will once again offer a one-stop showcase of new products and various aspects involved in future-proofing the laboratory. Visitors to the trade fair at the NEC, Birmingham on 30 and 31 October, will be able to discover ways to improve workflow efficiency, benefit from advances enabled by the digital age, and make sustainable procurement decisions.

Labtwin announced a partnerships with CA-based life science shared lab facilities Bonneville Labs and Lab Launch. Both groups provide smart lab facilities to scientists and emerging biotech companies.

The board game Go was long considered to be a bastion reserved for human players due to its complexity. Nowadays, however, the world’s best players no longer have any chance of winning against the “Alpha Go” software. Researchers at the University of Münster have now demonstrated that the recipe for the success of this software can be put to excellent use to plan chemical syntheses. The study has been published in the current issue of the “Nature” journal.

Chemical reactions and molecular modifications change the genome of every human over the course of their lifetime. These modifications can result in disease, but they also provide a basis for determining a person's biological age. Fraunhofer scientists participating in the project “Drug Target” have developed a method that can quickly check the condition of the genome.

NTU Singapore and Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) have launched a joint lab to conduct research in artificial senses and develop innovative robotics and healthcare solutions.

Remarkable recent developments in high-throughput research techniques allow scientists to collect more data than ever before. However, this presents significant challenges in terms of data storage, management and analysis. Cloud-based informatics platforms offer a potential solution, bringing together all aspects of laboratory management into a flexible and scalable system, designed to support future technologies as they become available.